Gollum
Regular Member
i heard it more than once from an english commentator (gillian clark) when she was in china and trained with the chinese team. they spent hours and hours to perfect the net cord shots. hard to believe but i have no reason to doubt her either. so, it's not just simply luck.
Well, it depends on the shot.
If you get a net cord when you hit a smash, then it's just luck. I don't believe any player in the world is capable of doing that deliberately (not without throwing away a lot of points for nothing, anyway...

If you get a net cord from a shot played very near the net, however, then sometimes it's not just luck. When I'm able to hit the shuttle at net height, only a few inches away from the net, with myself in a balanced position, then I aim for the very top of the cord or just above. I get a lot of net cords that way, but rarely make an error.
That's what the commentators mean when they say, "he made his own luck": the player got there early, on balance, and was able to play his shot from very near the net. In that situation, he has a decent chance of getting a net cord (perhaps 20%, in a good position. Sometimes it can be more).